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Mark S. Blumberg
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Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution 1st Edition

by Mark Blumberg (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 26 ratings
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In most respects, Abigail and Brittany Hensel are normal American twins. Born and raised in a small town, they enjoy a close relationship, though each has her own tastes and personality. But the Hensels also share a body. Their two heads sit side-by-side on a single torso, with two arms and two legs. They have not only survived, but have developed into athletic, graceful young women. And that, writes Mark S. Blumberg, opens an extraordinary window onto human development and evolution.

In Freaks of Nature, Blumberg turns a scientist's eye on the oddities of nature, showing how a subject once relegated to the sideshow can help explain some of the deepest complexities of biology. Why, for example, does a two-headed human so resemble a two-headed minnow? What we need to understand, Blumberg argues, is that anomalies are the natural products of development, and it is through developmental mechanisms that evolution works. Freaks of Nature induces a kind of intellectual vertigo as it upends our intuitive understanding of biology. What really is an anomaly? Why is a limbless human a "freak," but a limbless reptile-a snake-a successful variation?

What we see as deformities, Blumberg writes, are merely alternative paths for development, which challenge both the creature itself and our ability to fit it into our familiar categories. Rather than mere dead-ends, many anomalies prove surprisingly survivable-as in the case of the goat without forelimbs that learned to walk upright. Blumberg explains how such variations occur, and points to the success of the Hensel sisters and the goat as examples of the extraordinary flexibility inherent in individual development.

In taking seriously a subject that has often been shunned as discomfiting and embarrassing, Mark Blumberg sheds new light on how individuals-and entire species-develop, survive, and evolve.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0199736189
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0199736188
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    August 12, 2010
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    8.22 x 5.52 x 0.74 inches
  8. Print length
    326 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Book Description

In Freaks of Nature, Mark S. Blumberg turns a scientist's eye on the oddities of nature, showing how a subject once relegated to the sideshow can help explain some of the deepest complexities of biology.

About the Author

Mark Blumberg is Professor and Starch Faculty Fellow at the University of Iowa. The author of two books and more than eighty journal articles and chapters on a wide variety of subjects, he currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience and as President of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (August 12, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 326 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199736189
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199736188
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.22 x 5.52 x 0.74 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 26 ratings

About the author

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Mark S. Blumberg

Mark S. Blumberg

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Mark Blumberg is a behavioral neuroscientist and the F. Wendell Miller Professor at the University of Iowa. He received his bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in 1983, majoring in Physics and Philosophy. That year, he began graduate school at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in Biopsychology in 1988. After leaving Chicago, he began four years as a postdoctoral associate at Indiana University in Bloomington. In 1992, he moved to Iowa City to take a position at the University of Iowa.

Blumberg has published over 100 scientific articles and chapters on a wide variety of topics, including sleep, animal behavior, animal mind, temperature regulation, and communication. He received a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health and, In 1997, an Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association (APA). Currently, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience.

In addition, to Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us about Development and Evolution, Blumberg has published two other books of general science: Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior, and Body Heat: Temperature and LIfe on Earth. He also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience.

Blumberg was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
26 global ratings

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NYC consumer
5.0 out of 5 stars Freaks Speaks About Development
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2010
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I've read Freaks several times. The first time, I was curious about what Mark Blumberg, the author of Body Heat and Basic Instinct, had to say about the relations between abnormal and normal development. Here's the take-home message: Freaks focus our attention on developmental processes rather than on prescribed outcomes. As such, we learn how development plays out, moment by moment in real time. I've returned to the book many times over the last several months to refresh my memory about particular points and to use the text for teaching graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Blumberg's writing style is engaging and clear, the examples are powerful and illustrative, and each chapter makes the argument that individuals solve the problems of development by adapting to and exploiting the constraints and propensities of their own bodies and environments--my favorite is "Do The Locomotion" featuring Johnny Eck, a legless man who learned to walk and climb on his hands, and Faith, the two-legged dog who learned to walk and hop without functional forelimbs. Freaks works beautifully as a teaching tool and it's an interesting and deeply thoughtful read for anyone interested in development or evolution. The book is important and thought provoking and guaranteed to instigate spirited discussion.
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Niklas Anderberg
4.0 out of 5 stars fREakS oF nATuRE
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2009
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This is a very entertaining book. Except for the chapter on sexuality, it seemed almost to read itself. Full of examples and illustrations of anomalies, it takes us through a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Contrary to the usual perspective, Mark S. Blumberg treats these "freaks of nature" not as malformations and deviations; well, they are - but so are we. According to Blumberg we are all monsters. Nature tries something out and if it works it's "normal" and if it doesn't it's deemed "unnatural". But why should the fact that we humans have five fingers and not nine be seen as the normal state of affairs?
Now, I cannot judge if Blumberg has got his epigenetics right, but he seems quite adamant and polemic about it. Without mentioning Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley or E.O. Wilson, he strongly condemns what he sees as "genetic determinism". It's old-fashioned as well as incorrect, he says, to apply a gene-centered view on evolution. It also works the other way around: the environment induces evolutionary change. "Character can be inherited by the next generation without a genetic mechanism", he states and claims that this insight is now becoming commonplace (183). Here he refers notably to Jablonka and Lamb (Evolution in four dimensions, 2005) and West-Eberhard (Development plasticity and the origins of species, 2005). When he mentions supporters of Evo Devo, such as Sean Carroll, he still deplores their one-sidedness in conferring to genes the main role in evolutionary development. On the other side of the coin, there is no mentioning of Lamarck, making it a bit unclear to a lay-person like me what exactly it is that Blumberg so vehemently defends. In his "Nature via Nurture" from 2003, Matt Ridley states: "Learning could not be expressed without experience. Innateness could not be expressed without experience. The truth of each idea is not proof of the falsehood of another." His conclusion is that the dichotomy "Nature versus Nurture is dead "(279-280). He illustrates this with a couple of quotations by proponents of different perspectives on evolution, such as Gould, Dawkins, Pinker and Rose. Some of these would be considered by the others to be extreme genetic determinists. Yet, according to Ridley, they believe roughly the same thing, namely that human nature comes from an interaction of nature with nurture. This point is also made in another book, "Not by genes alone" by Richerson and Boyd (2005), putting the emphasis on culture but without using the term epigenetic.
Be that as it may, except for a few technical discussions - he somewhere jokingly apologizes for what looks like a list of acronyms - Blumberg has written a highly readable and thought-provoking book about what evolution and its false starts can tell us about ourselves. Quite hilarious is the passing fancy that God created Eve, not from the rib of Adam but out of his baculum, i.e. man's lost penis bone. In support of this Blumberg offers the fact that males and females share the same number of ribs.
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nightwnder
5.0 out of 5 stars Every chapter revealed another surprise!!!!
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2012
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This book should be a companion book for all those books people interested in evolution and neuroscience have read, or have yet to read! Mark Blumberg answered questions I never knew I had; explained science I never knew I needed explained. He drove home to me the still evolving science of evolution, and the wonder and power of nature! My only wish is Great Courses (The Teaching Company) would develope a lecture series with him. Thank you Amazon for putting this book on my recommendations list!
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R. Clay
2.0 out of 5 stars Too much philosophy, not enough simple facts and illustrations.
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2013
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This reads like one of those 19 th century books that is not up to date with the modern mind. My interest was about current discoveries and research into factors such as global environmental change, the effect of toxins in large developing nations, etc on biological changes. I'm disappointed that I didn't try a sample before wasting $9.99 on an outdated tome that offered little in the way of current trends or issues.
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S. Gallagher
4.0 out of 5 stars An important look at environmental factors
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2010
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This is an entertaining and much-needed tale about how the adult form is the product of (genes AND) environment. However, he goes a bit far and sometimes ignores genes altogether. He needs genes to make his case about variability in the cellular environment, but bends over backward to keep this from the reader by avoiding the use of the phrase "gene expression" when he is talking about gene expression. Many biologists will find this particularly silly (in a discussion of Shh, of all things!) as he tells us that dolphins don't have limbs because the cells of the embryonic limb buds lack specific "signaling molecules" during development (p163). It's "transcription and translation" and it is influenced by the presence or absence of other genes. I don't think that saying this would have compromised his overall argument unless there's a bigger agenda. I'm suspicious about a poorly placed dig at evolutionary psychology (p. 137) which appears in the middle of an otherwise brilliant discussion about locomotion but his point, that you don't need a mutation to make a mutant, is well taken.
2 people found this helpful
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Cheryl L Lowman
5.0 out of 5 stars An eye opener!
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2014
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I read this book for a developmental psychology class. This book is so informative and interesting! I really think the world would be a more hospitable place if more people understood this area of science. We shun those who are different when we should be celebrating the fact that there is so much exciting variability!
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Timshel Purdum
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother.
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016
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Don't bother. Read Sean B Carrol's
books for better writing and better science. The book is poorly written and the science is terrible
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